


Harriet visits Tanswick

by Charlotte (DaughterOfTheRains)



Category: Chalet School - Elinor M. Brent-Dyer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-31
Updated: 2020-01-31
Packaged: 2021-02-27 10:21:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,778
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22485496
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DaughterOfTheRains/pseuds/Charlotte
Summary: There (may) be a little more action in this one (very much a modern day fic) if I ever get round to continuing it. But currrently it's basically all information, atmosphere, and recalling the past or recent events. It comes with a bit of a content warning though, because there's quite a lot of talk about Brexit (so divisive!) along with one or two other somewhat unpleasantreferences. Despite the title, there's quite extensive discussion of the Carnbach school (Glendower House, not St Briavels), as well.
Kudos: 1





	Harriet visits Tanswick

Harriet Lambert drove along the main road from the north side towards Tanswick, in summer 2018. It was a very hot and sunny mid July day, and the air conditioning in her car was on at near full-blast. The digital radio signal in this area was useless, so she switched to blaring out Radio 1 on FM. She always felt a bit guilty about the aircon, because of climate change, but really she was in no mood just now to worry about the environment. Sod it, she thought rather insensitively, the British weather is usually so awful anyway, maybe global warming will eventually improve it. Harriet was a granddaughter of the notoriously troublesome Chalet School (at Carnbach) pupil Jack Lambert, who herself had considerably improved later on in life. Jack had always been interested in cars (especially) and mechanical things, and had eventually become a much-respected motoring correspondent. Of course she was now very old, but still lived in her own house and managed reasonably well.

Harriet, an only child, had learned a huge amount over the years, from Jack and various other sources, about the history of the Chalet School. Especially Jo and her partner Jack, whom she had met quite a few times (their last years had been spent in a pleasant small house in the New Forest, not far from Pretty Maids). She thought they were nice enough people, if a bit too extroverted for her. But she had certainly not liked their last dog before they died, though. It was a black and white female St Bernard, Emmie (named after Emmie Linders of the prewar Chalet School). Harriet was basically a cat person, but did occasionally like a few dogs. Just like Bruno, though, Emmie was pretty badly trained and liked to leap all over strangers and lick them in an unappealing way. She also had a friendly but irritating biting habit. Though her habit of rubbing against legs was appealing. The dog had outlived it's owners. Because no other relations wanted to take it on, it had gone to a Hampshire animal shelter, and apparently ended up on the Isle of Wight. 

Because Madge (both she and Jem were also long gone by now, and Harriet only hazily remembered them) had decided against moving the school to Switzerland, the buildings near Lauterbrunnen that would have housed it, had remained a (now tastefully updated) hotel in mostly the same old buildings. Harriet had been on a camping holiday there, and thought it was a rather boring location. It had been far more interesting visiting the Tiernsee, even though the former school site had been so sadly derelict and falling apart, because the regional water authority were not maintaining it much at all. 

Hattie didn't share too much of Jack's once pretty nasty, bullying side. She had always been very able in most academic subjects, an excellent lacrosse and netball player, and had been a form prefect more than once at Glendower back in the 1990s. Though to this day, she still felt somewhat bitter that she had missed out on any chance of being a full prefect by just a few votes (the system had finally been changed in the late 1980s to add some democracy, though the staff still had the ultimate say). In fact, Tegwen Holledge, one of Mary-Lou's descendants and an almost terrifyingly bossy and self-confident girl who clearly took after Mary-Lou but was definitely more abrasive at her worst, had beaten her to it. 

And nowadays Harriet was a volunteer moderator on a busy internet fashion forum, where users sometimes disliked each other and got into nasty arguments. She occasionally compared it with a school role, not least because some posters could behave not unlike childish schoolgirls (or boys, in some cases, the site was majority female). She also kind of regretted that (except for the occasional weekend or few days when her parents could not be at home) she didn't know what it was like to board as she had lived in Carnbach with her parents (very close to Jo's old home, Cartref, which still existed and was well kept by the family who lived there now). Born in London, her parents had moved to Carnbach when she was 11 so that she could attend the Chalet School as a day pupil.

For many years, she had (mostly) been reasonably happy with her life. After studying sports science at university, she had become a swimming teacher and had also more recently taken up coding mobile apps as well (like Jack, Hattie was rather technically-minded). In her mid-30s, she had met what seemed at first like a very nice partner. They had moved out of the London area due to the horrendous property prices, and now lived in a house not far from the Bosherton lilly ponds. Unfortunately, things had recently taken quite a considerable turn for the worse.

It had all begun, more or less, with the wretched Brexit vote, though she also felt that the world had definitely become a darker place in general due to the numerous bad or very bad things happening in other countries. The unusually extreme way that thunder and lightning had been swirling all around on the night after the polls closed now seemed like a sign of the huge upheaval it had caused in British society and politics. Like the majority of her family and friends (especially most but certainly not all, of those that had ever been connected with the Chalet School in some way), Harriet was very strongly in favour of staying in the EU. Her partner had also gone to an (all boys) private school (as a boarder), but a very different kind of one, far more traditionalist and conservative. He had voted leave, but his family and friends were far more divided on the issue. She and him now tried to avoid discussing the matter at all, but it could make some mutual social gatherings a bit awkward.  
Then Harriet had found out that for medical reasons, she wasn't going to be able to have any children. This was very upsetting and put a bit more strain on their relationship. She felt that they needed to get away from each other for a w-long weekend, at least. That morning she had visited a prehistoric burial chamber and shire horse farm further inland, in north Pembrokeshire.

Now she was passing the path that led up to the Tanswick Chalet School, and the school's boathouse, which also served as a bathing hut. It had got into some financial trouble at one point and needed to run a desperate appeal to former pupils, but as with Glendower House, was luckily now very modern and still going reasonably strong. Though according to a newspaper article about the state of UK boarding schools, it was now actually owned by a foreign educational company that had bought one or two other struggling schools. The Carnbach school was now just a charitable organisation like most other independent schools (no longer a limited company as such), with mostly outside governors. The Bettany family had only very limited involvement now. That was the path where Lavender Scott had got lost in the winter darkness and had a serious accident, way back in the 1950s. Harriet had actually heard about that, but couldn't remember how. Nowadays the path was quite a bit wider and paved, with more curves to make it less steep, had streetlights, and a railing on both sides, all the way from the road to the school. The branch that Lavender had accidentally taken was still very narrow, steep, totally unimproved, but a gate now closed it off. At the bottom of the school drive, there was a large sign advertising "The Chalet School at Tanswick", it's official name. During her time in Carnbach, Harriet had visited the school for quite a few sports matches, and the odd joint musical event. Term would have ended by now, so she decided to drive up and maybe wander around. Both schools had long ago begun to rely very heavily on day pupils as well as (nowadays mostly weekly) boarders.

At the top it all still felt very open, with the same low hedge all around the perimeter. There was, given the dangers of the modern world, surprisingly little evidence of any attempt to keep trespassers out. Whereas at Carnbach, it was all sadly much less open than in the past. She daringly drove right up to the front of the large rambling white house that was the main building, parked on the large gravel area, and got out. It was certainly imposing but attractive, she thought. Glendower house had some very pretty gardens and outbuildings, but their main building (which, like the Tanswick one, was about as big as the Plas Howell house) had a rather forbidding appearance, an odd kind of cross between Gothic architecture and a medieval castle. The sun was still very hot and it was almost eerily quiet. Later on in the holidays, the school's premises would be let out for a large childrens' summer camp and maintenance was done as well sometimes, but just now there seemed to be absolutely no-one around. Someone had dropped a calendar of all the last term's important dates and events that was issued to all pupils, and she picked it up.

It had the school's badge on the front above the list of prefects, games captains etc, which, appropriately, looked rather like the original chalet at the Tiernsee. There certainly seemed to be a lot going on, as well as all the national exams, parents day at half term, sports day at the end, and so on. Some of these, such as the charity non-uniform day/starvation lunch, the annual inter-house music competition, and inter-house/individual fashion show/competition, and of course the end of term craft sale for charity (a very strong Chalet School tradition), Harriet remembered from her school. Others were unfamiliar, like the talent show competition, another annual event where they specifically sold produce from the school's garden and the few nearby farm fields that it still owned, alongside other food such as cakes made by pupils, to the general public (like a farmers' market), and a "Girls in Tech" event. 

She decided to walk to the front of the grounds and have her lunch there. Along the way she noticed several molehills on the lawn and flower beds, there was obviously a problem with them here too (the groundsmen at Carnbach had constantly been fighting the animals). The lawn was well kept though, and the bushes and flowers would have been pretty but the very hot summer had obviously severely affected both, turning much of them parched and brown. She was shocked, though, to see a syringe in the grass and hoped that no-one would tread on it with bare feet. Presumably a local drug addict had been injecting up here, unless the school itself had a drugs problem. A couple of girls had actually been expelled from Carnbach for drugs offences in 2008, and the media had unfortunately got wind of it. While still a very nice town, it was sadly certainly not quite the safe law-abiding place it had been in the 1950s, Tanswick town was much the same. 

Between the main gate and the path down, there was a summerhouse that had large windows all round (to catch the sun) with a viewpoint, a sundial, and a pretty white cast-iron bench that looked Victorian. Harriet sat down on the bench and began to eat, looking down on the buildings of the town, all the boats, and the people on the beach and in the sea. Afterwards she tried the summerhouse door (noting with amusement the catflap in the door, the cat having gone home for the duration of the holidays with the classics mistress, who owned her), and walked in. It was slightly cooler inside, with wooden benches all around the walls. She had also noticed a plaque on the wall outside saying "Constructed 1890, rebuilt 1935 after a severe winter storm in February. It also said "In Memoriam - Heulwen, sadly died on this very spot". That actually commemorated a girl who had been killed by a slate blown off the roof during the roof during that storm. There was another plaque set into the ground commemorating Sooty, the school's very charismatic cat of Tessa Willoughby's era, who had died in 1967 after 20 years. He had started a tradition of a cat living at the school in term-time, looked after by a rota of pupil and/or prefect volunteers. The present one was a sleek, elegant tortoiseshell called Sheba, after the premium catfood brand. She had got used to her unusual split-location existence, as she had been introduced to it as a kitten. There was also a stern notice on the wall saying:

Respect school property!

Any girl found vandalising the cushions or writing graffiti on the wall or floor tiles, will be strongly punished. 

Mrs Scoble, Headmistress and Head Girl, Lara Tovey

The cushions had obviously been removed for the holidays. She sat down for a minute or two, but didn't particularly like the atmosphere in there, though it wasn't creepy or threatening as such, just brooding. Presumably it was alright in termtime when the school was bustling with activity, but it did indeed feel rather like something very bad had once happened in the vicinity. As she left, she happened to glance back through the glass door and saw a girl sitting in there, dressed in the school's original gymslip-based uniform which had been modernised long ago and apparently fiddling with a leather satchel, doing some homework. The girl looked up and smiled at her. Harriet was pleased though to see a squirrel rushing across the grass, some more current life. Wanting to explore more, she walked around the formal gardens in front of the house, also admiring the panoramic view across to the standing stones on the other side of town from the right side and further along the coast, to the left. It was surprising somehow, how large this place was. The white pebbledashed building to the right with a sign saying Bala House, was the 6th form accomodation block, which also contained a few classrooms. Both it, the school's corrugated iron bin shed next to it, and the also pebbledashed garages, were ugly modern (1970s) features. The old wooden buildings that had once stood there, had blended far better into the scenery.

She returned to her car again, and walked round the house, peering in at some of the windows where the curtains or blinds were not drawn, and through the conservatory glass. One of the side doors also had a catflap in it. The largish duck pond round the back had several ducks quacking and wandering around, which was nice. Better, she thought, than the huge rather vulgar Victorian fountain round the back of the main building in Carnbach. But the atmosphere in this area didn't feel entirely comfortable. There was a sense of being watched, and Harriet thought she heard the sound of a window being opened and shut. Walking on, she came to the (attractive) former stables block on the right, which had been extended and converted into the junior house. A few girls did actually ride, but their ponies were kept at the local equestrian centre where Imogen Tovey had once ridden.  
To the left was the former dairy, which had also been extended. It housed the art room, and a few other classrooms.  
Remarkably, the wooden and corrugated iron roof army huts were still in use as games equipment storage sheds, but looked like they were about to fall down. The school had wanted to replace them, but the money had run out because their 1970s building programme was affected by the economic crisis of the era. Then the huts had eventually been listed (like the main school building, and Glendower house for that matter, partly because of it's unusual appearance) because of their historical significance in wartime training and defence, so their bad appearance now was a bit shameful.

Very like St Briavels had once been, whereas the Glendower art room was on the top floor, and their dairy was used for remedial English and maths as well as the occasional exam. Inbetween was the (modern) gym and indoor swimming pool. The ancient huts had been pressed back into use, because the huge storage closet in the gym had been converted into a weight training room. Behind that were the games pitches, grass and all-weather, with an athletics track marked out on the grass. To the left of the sports centre was another incredibly ugly pebbledashed building, this one painted grey. The large clock and cross on the roof, and a few stained glass windows, showed that this was the school's 1970s-built chapel. The chapel at Carnbach had surprisingly only been built in 2012 (it looked disappointingly cheaply built and tacky, Harriet thought, when she had been to an old girls' day there). Before that, they had always just split the school hall between Protestants, Catholics, and some Methodists for services, very similar to how Tanswick handled the three denominations. The reason for that was partly that building a chapel was expensive, but also because the Carnbach school hall had large Gothic windows and a splendid ceiling, so it had been a good setting for religious services. 

Eventually she came near to the very back of the school grounds, where there was a quite large and impressive-looking fruit and vegetable garden, with two small greenhouses each slightly bigger than a typical home one. It was surrounded with a wire fence and gate. To the potting shed wall by the door was stuck another laminated notice reminding the pupils to keep everything as tidy as possible, always (this was bolded) wash and clean all tools after use, and so on. At the bottom it said Scarletta Ansell, Gardening Prefect. It was similar to the Carnbach pupils' garden, but their larger Victorian glasshouse was far more imposing, situated near an artitificial lake. The wooden shed looked extremely old. There was a tap as well, and a little hut next to it with toilet paper inside, which seemed to be an earth closet! It was a bit of a walk to the nearest lavatory if anyone got caught short while gardening and doubtless such an arrangement would have been perfectly acceptable in the past, but how on earth did they get that past modern health and safety rules. 

By the shed door, there was also another old metal notice that had obviously been preserved partly for historical reasons. It said: 

Lanterns or any other naked flames must not be used in this shed because of the severe fire risk if dropped, only electric torches! 

By order, February 1935

The reason for that was that in the early days of the school, they had bought a supply of the largest and brightest paraffin or gas lanterns then available, and they were commonly used when gardening on dark autumn/winter afternoons. Later, safer and superior battery-powered electric lanterns were used instead, before electrical power was eventually extended to the gardening enclosure. Today there was not only a rather large light on the front of the shed, but also two tall poles with a powerful floodlight, on either side of the enclosure, that were used in poor daylight conditions. That was the very month that long-ago pupil Heulwen had been killed. Harriet shuddered and wondered what she and this school had been like in prewar days. There was also a bench here, so she sat down for a moment and began to remember something that she hardly ever thought about now.

There had actually been a girl called Heulwen Wright at her school as she now recalled, a boarder and a friendly, not malicious but definitely naughty pupil, from Conwy in North Wales. In the early days of being a form prefect, Harriet had been nicknamed bossy boots Hattie because it had gone to her head a bit too much. Fortunately soon enough she had calmed down quite a bit, but not before an incident had sadly ended her relationship with Heulwen. 

At Glendower, there was a nice tradition, in season, of appointing a girl from each form as flower monitor. Their role was to collect some flowers from the garden or the glasshouse, and put them in the form room for a while. They were always supposed to have flowers, in season (back then, climate change had not so much got underway, she noted as well, nowadays it might well affect the garden somewhat). Out of season, the flowers came from the local flower shop, but only in the run-up to the Christmas holidays. To avoid breakages, metal vases or jugs were always used.  
One Friday morning in Summer term 1993, they had all been waiting for the third form top set Spanish mistress to arrive. Suddenly Heulwen rushed in, rather hyper after too much coffee and sugar in her cereal for breakfast, and knocked the vase of daffodils off the shelf with her arm, spilling flowers and water across the floor. Harriet had got up from her seat and confronted her angrily, standing in such an authoritarian pose:

"What did you just do, and why, you stupid girl?"

To which Heulwen had replied: "Haha you sound so high and mighty, you're not a mistress you know"

"Well no, but I am your form prefect, which does carry some weight of course" said Harriet in the same tones.

That cut no ice with Heulwen, who started singing "I'm the king of the castle, you may wear a form pree badge but your're a dirty rascal..."

The whole class burst out laughing, but Harriet was furious. She turned to them, and said "Shut up, all of you, now!" Many of the form members were actually scared of her, so the laughter soon subsided to mere sniggering.

"You're lucky everyone just listened to you, Harriet, your undignified manner wasn't exactly encouraging it. This is such a posh school, you probably wouldn't have lasted five minutes in the local comprehensive where I used to go for two years" said Heulwen in her thick Welsh accent.

"Oh wow, you have a cheek!" replied Harriet, wanting to box her ears.

Even full prefects were no longer allowed to give an order or conduct mark on the grounds of merely being talked to rudely, because that had been seen as too antiquated and pompous. Instead, they just emphasised the importance of politeness throughout life, then moved on. Just as at Tanswick by the 1990s, it had long since gone the way of cold baths, curtseys, and other outdated practices such as  
marching down to breakfast. 

"Well maybe I do like talking back, especially to authority figures, but anyway I'm really not sure I want to be friends with you anymore" said Heulwen.

Harriet's face fell sadly, but she was still annoyed. The form prees were allowed to give order or conduct marks (for valid reasons) to any members of their form (only), and she decided to do that now.

"So Heulwen, you will clean up that mess straightaway, and take a conduct mark for being so damned careless and not admitting your clumsiness"

"I am not cleaning it up, sod you too"

"Please don't swear, and if you don't clean the floor, I will report you to the form mistress and try and get you excluded from the picnic on Sunday. You've already been in trouble this term, and are quite close to having to see the head" (order marks and conduct marks were now posted publically on a noticeboard, in an attempt to encourage good behaviour). As at the (1990s) Tanswick, they were also trialling a positive equivalent to the order mark to reward good deeds, but so far at least only school prefects were involved with that.

Heulwen really didn't want any of that trouble, so she reluctantly aquiesced, perhaps also because her other main friend Ursula Endacott, was making a face that  
seemed to say Heulwen was now just making a fool of herself. Then the form mistress came in as she was cleaning up, and Harriet explained what had happened. Heulwen got an additional scolding before sitting down next to Ursula instead of Harriet. There was no longer a special desk allocated for form prefects as in the past, but the latter had just begun sitting next to her deputy Katrina Bancroft instead. In time, they became good friends and Katrina rose to deputy head girl, but Hattie didn't begrudge her that, unlike with Tegwen.

The main school building had unfortunately always had quite a problem with mice and even the odd rat, with little containers of poison in many corners and often squeaking and scratching heard at night, mostly in autumn and winter. Professional pest controllers were used, but somehow nothing was ever 100% effective. Occasionally, the rodents were actually seen. Disgustingly, Harriet and Katrina had once both noticed a rat in the refectory. And whereas at Tanswick, guineapigs for example, could always be accomodated by special arrangement and there was a pets prefect, bringing any pets to Carnbach was strictly forbidden, and there was no school cat or anything. It was rumoured that it was really because the then head had a severe allergy to pets. 

She had apparently kicked out all animals before Harriet's time, on the spurious grounds that they were too expensive to accomodate, too much hassle, and could distract from academic work. Sadly, that persisted to this day. Though they still had a corridor with tropical fish tanks, like at the local hospital, with ducks and swans on the rather silted-up lake (originally a boating lake, but not in the school's time). It all looked very nice and modern now (and the fees, even for day pupils, were, regrettably, far more expensive as well, with significantly fewer British pupils and more foreigners than in the past), but the whole place had by the 90s become very shabby really, partly because while the headmistress was very intelligent and really good with pupils and staff, she was also very penny-pinching, like many of the school's governors. The plaster in the large but old-fashioned gym that was a former billiards room, had been especially crumbling, so they had always put thick crash mats under the wallbars, in case they fell off! 

Eventually, a few years after Harriet left, one row of bars had finally come loose. Fortunately, the girl on it at the time managed to get away safely, but the school got into trouble for health and safety violations. That finally convinced the head that something major needed to be done. Today, the partitioned billiards room housed both the school's computer room, and a language laboratory, while the Gym was moved to a large new metal shed in the grounds. By then, Tanswick also looked pretty awful, nothing like it's elegant 1950s appearance. The latter had also finally been extensively refurbished in recent years.  
As for Harriet and Heulwen, they never forgave each other for this incident, for many years. It was only in 2016 that Heulwen had finally added her on Facebook and Twitter, and they made up.

Heulwen had voted remain too, and like Harriet, was very unhappy with most of what had happened to the country since the vote. Whereas Katrina had voted leave, though she was very nice and polite in explaining why, above all because she thought the EU was not democratic enough. Katrina had admitted that a disorderly no-deal exit would cause disruption, but was optimistic about what she saw as the opportunities of Brexit. Whereas Heulwen and Harriet desperately hoped that a no-deal could somehow be avoided. But as the politics had ever become more polarised and difficult, they were not holding their breath. Heulwen's friend Ursula had apparently not bothered to vote in 2016 at all despite being broadly in favour of remain, and Heulwen had chastised her for it.

In the humid air, Harriet was dripping with sweat and wanted to splash her face from the tap, but the water had obviously been turned off. The electricity inside the shed was clearly off as well, because the lightswitch didn't work. But by using the torch app on her phone, she found a stopcock inside the shed and turned it. Then water flowed out of the tap, and she was able to have a good splash before turning the stopcock off again.


End file.
